A poignant, personal reflection on basketball, life, and
home--from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little
Devil in America
"Mesmerizing .
. . not only the most original sports book I've ever read but one of
the most moving books I've ever read, period."--Steve James,
director of Hoop Dreams
Growing up in
Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era
of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged and
countless others weren't. His lifelong love of the game leads
Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich
exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves
success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very
notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with
intimate, personal storytelling. "Here is where I would like to
tell you about the form on my father's jump shot," Abdurraqib
writes. "The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a
basketball only one time."
There's Always
This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity,
comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen
focus--whether it's basketball, or music, or performance--Hanif
Abdurraqib's exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and
always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our
culture, our country, and ourselves.
